Who Gets to Define Academic Excellence?

We're proud to see our leadership helping shape the national conversation about the future of higher education. In an op-ed published August 31 in Inside Higher Ed, Stand Together for Higher Ed senior adviser Kumble Subbaswamy argues that no university should respond to Secretary McMahon's August 3 letter without significant faculty involvement.

Subbaswamy observes that the letter asks presidents and governing boards to answer publicly on admissions transparency, free expression, and intellectual pluralism in academic units — precisely the subjects the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities assigns to faculty as a primary responsibility. Not long ago, he writes, it would have been hard to imagine an institution articulating policy on curriculum, grading, and research integrity without faculty at the table. With faculty governance now being weakened or abolished in many states by legislation or board action, faculty may be left out entirely or brought in only at the margins.

He offers two contrasting examples. Vanderbilt's Board of Trustees adopted a Declaration of First Principles addressing these same academic questions, reportedly without faculty consultation. Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Andrew Martin, by contrast, has committed to a faculty-led process for developing his institution's response. The second approach, Subbaswamy argues, should be the norm rather than the exception.

The values the letter invokes — academic rigor, intellectual pluralism, free expression, research integrity — are ones universities already hold. The danger, he writes, lies in letting government define what they mean and dictate how they are implemented.

"It is who gets to define those principles and determine how they are realized."
— Kumble Subbaswamy, senior adviser, STHE

The op-ed also takes up what institutions should do next. Refusing the Secretary's call outright may be the principled position, Subbaswamy acknowledges, but it risks striking the public as tone-deaf. Along with other organizations, STHE believes the better course is a collective response addressed to the public directly, countering the misconceptions and misinformation now circulating about higher education. That response cannot be built without the people who carry out the academic work of the university.

At Stand Together for Higher Ed, we echo this call. Our Faculty Governance Alert urges faculty senates and other governance bodies to ask their presidents and boards, in writing, to make no decision on whether or how to respond to the DOE letter without first consulting faculty governance. A template letter you can adapt is available there.

We invite you to read Subbaswamy's full op-ed in Inside Higher Ed.